Fighting in Agricultural Areas of the Southeastern United States

In the scientific literature, interest in male aggression is driven by views that consuming alcohol increases the likelihood of fighting. This literature mostly focuses on barrooms. Ethnographic research generally stays clear of associating bars with fighting by exploring the expressive dimensions of drunken comportment and/or (less often) the antecedents to fighting, which may take place in a variety of settings. Based on long-term fieldwork among farm laborers across the Eastern and Midwestern United States, and an analysis of field data from one agricultural home-base community, this article examines implications of fighting among farmworkers who spend time in bars and taverns (la cantina) and/or the street (la calle). Street settings were found to be more volatile than bars and taverns in agricultural areas in relation to “scrapping” among men, and, thus, more likely to end in fight-related injury. Nonetheless, men often engaged in forms of impression management that expressed their masculinity, as well as effectively avoided potential violence and possible injury

HIV Prevention Toolkit for Unaccompanied Men Who Perform Agricultural Labor

Farm workers are vulnerable to irregular employment and job uncertainty. These conditions increase the likelihood they will find themselves in living and working sites where risk for HIV is present. Considering the exacerbated risk for HIV among unaccompanied male agricultural workers, a national non-profit farm worker health training and technical assistance organization planned and developed an HIV prevention-education toolkit to assist migrant and community health centers with HIV education to reach this population of vulnerable male farm workers. This article reviews iterative development of the toolkit in three phases, outlines the process whereby community input grounded the product in ways that were culturally responsive and linguistically appropriate for the target population of male farm workers, explores implications of the project as a national initiative to reduce HIV risks in a sizeable but dispersed community, and briefly describes how the overall project was assessed through community-based strategies